The Insider is a political and business bulletin about Zimbabwe, edited by Charles Rukuni. Founded in 1990, it was a printed 12-page subscription only newsletter until 2003 when Zimbabwe's hyper-inflation made it impossible to continue printing.

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Mutinhiri resigns from ZANU-PF and Parliament, accused of fronting for National Patriotic Front

The Speaker National Assembly Parliament of Zimbabwe Parliament Building

Dear Sir

REF: Withdrawal of Membership from Zanu-PF and Resignation From Parliament of Zimbabwe

I write to inform you of my decision to withdraw my membership from Zanu-PF with effect from today 2 March 2018, and by that very fact, my resignation as Member of the National Assembly for Marondera West as I was elected on a Zanu-PF ticket.

I have taken this decision after carefully considering the events of the past four months, starting with the unconstitutional overthrow of the elected Head of State and Government, President Robert Mugabe and his illegal replacement with Emmerson Mnangagwa, by the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) through a military coup On 15 November 2017. It is a matter of profound national concern to me that, subsequent to the military coup, Zanu-PF, as well as government and State institutions, have been captured by ZDF in blatant and unprecedented violation of the Constitution of Zimbabwe.

As a trained soldier, a former freedom fighter, a former ZIPRA Commander during the liberation struggle, a former diplomat and a former cabinet minister, I am too aware of not only the values and ethos of Zimbabwe’s armed liberation struggle and the subsequent role the founding commanders of the liberation envisaged for the national army in independent Zimbabwe but also of the functions and limits of the ZDF as enshrined in the Constitution of Zimbabwe authored through a people drive process and adopted after a national referendum as recent as 2013. The fundamental values and tenets of both Zimbabwe’s heroic liberation struggle and the Constitution of Zimbabwe dictate that executive authority is derived from the people and not from the gun. In other words, the enduring principle of Zimbabwe’s armed liberation struggle and constitutional democracy is that politics must always lead the gun. The ZDF coup of 15 November 2017 violated a cherished heritage of our armed liberation struggle and of our hard-won constitutional democracy.

I am, therefore, not lost to the illegality of the actions of a few rogue elements in the command structure of the ZDF who abused their positions to turn the guns they were entrusted with by the people of Zimbabwe to defend our sovereignty, into weapons to shoot their way into national politics and to seize control of both the State and Zanu-PF.

Our national constitution clearly defines the role of the ZDF and outlaws any of its serving members from engaging in partisan politics as was witnessed on 15 November 2017 when some rogue elements in the Command Structure staged a coup in the name of ZDF under the shocking pretext of averting a Zanu-PF electoral loss in the forthcoming harmonised elections.

It is now very clear for all to see that the party that was formed and driven by the liberation struggle guiding principle in Zipra and Zanla that politics must always lead the gun, has been hijacked and corrupted by fascist elements who suffer from the mistaken belief that access to the armoury gives them the right to dictate who should lead Zimbabwe and its people.

I am a firm believer, as a disciplined former soldier and product of our nationalist movements, in the sanctity of democratic ethos and constitutionalism that put our people as the only source of legitimacy in the governance structures from local to national levels.

The Insider is a political and business bulletin about Zimbabwe, edited by Charles Rukuni. Founded in 1990, it was a printed 12-page subscription only newsletter until 2003 when Zimbabwe's hyper-inflation made it impossible to continue printing.